I have seen where the glass was not well applied to stringers and it
appeared "bowed" at the top. Glass does not bow a lot before it cracks.
Anything as old as your boat is going to have wet wood. Fiberglass is not
waterproof so water will eventually make it's way through the galss and into
the wood. There are alot of good articles on the net about water and
fiberglass. That does not mean you have rot. You need to drill some core
samples to see. Also part of the strength is the twin layers of hull and
floor separated by the stringers. Removing the floor materially weakens the
whole structure so your bounce test is not completely accurate. Is your
boat poorly constructed, maybe. Do you need to replace stringers and floor,
maybe not. Just about everyone with an old fiberglass and encapsulated wood
boat is in the same situation. If you do start replacing things try to find
composite substitutes for the wood and use epoxy instead of polyester resin.

"Steve Lortie" wrote in message
.. .
If anyone has any comments on this, please fire away (with blanks though).

I have a 40 ft 1969 Drifter. The two main stringers (16" deep) running off
centre the length of the boat, certainly appear to have problems. The
glass
applied to the stringer is buldged out from the stringer a good inch, both
sides! This would imply that the stringers have dropped but they are the
same height as the next set of stringers parallel to them providing a
level
floor. After removing the floor the give in the stringers is quite
obvious -
a good half an inch of vertical movement when you bounce on them. The hull
is pretty thick and there doesn't "appear" to be any sagging, cracking
etc.
The stringers are very wet along the bottom which also implies rotting.
The
stringer is merely covered with one layer of what I believe is a roven
material which to me is just covering it and not bonding it to the hull
for
extra strength. Repair books show layering of the cloth to build in
strength
"transfer".

Am I looking too deep into this:

level floor (was it originally??) but buldging fiberglass implies the
stringer has dropped (the floor was sitting right down on the stringer).
Bouncy stringer. Doesn't even look like it was put in there for strength.
Is
that possible?

Should I just rip em out and replace or leave them? Any one else with a
Drift-R-Cruz that has looked under their floor and discovered something
similar?

Thanks!